The Medal of Honor is our nation’s highest award for valor. There have been only 3,466 medals awarded since the first one in 1863. As of this moment, there are 105 living recipients: 30 from World War II, 14 from the Korea War, and 61 from the Vietnam War. All awards since then have been posthumous, including the most recent one awarded to Navy Seal Michael Monsoor, who threw himself on a grenade, saving two fellow Seal Team members. To be awarded a Medal of Honor, one must demonstrate “conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of life, above and beyond the call of duty.”
 
I had the great privilege to attend a luncheon last week, sponsored by the National Museum of Patriotism in Atlanta. (www.museumofpatriotism.org) I personally met about a dozen of the more than 30 MOH recipients who were there and I had the honor of sitting at the lunch table with Robert T. Ingram. Although there was nothing physically distinguishing about “Doc” Ingram, he exuded a quiet dignity. Had I passed him on the street I would have noted nothing peculiar about him; he was modest and self-effacing. He and his attractive wife, Doris, talked about their home remodeling project and some of their travels. A native Floridian, Bob Ingram enlisted in the Navy and became a Hospital Corpsman Third Class. He found himself with C Company, First Battalion, Seventh Marines in Quang Ngai Province Republic of Vietnam on the 28th of March, 1966.
His citation for the Medal of Honor begins the way most of them do: For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty . . . After reading all the citations of all the men who attended the luncheon, the word intrepidity seemed to me to be the term that set them apart. In one of the definitions of intrepidity the word fearless appears. Every soldier I spoke with last week and every one I’ve ever heard interviewed said they were fearful. Soldierly courage comes from properly dealing with that fear—not letting it get the best of you. In reading the Medal of Honor citations, something they all seem to have in common is being undaunted by the danger and obstacles that battle flings at a man. Notice the perseverance, the intrepidity, the undaunted nature of his courage:
 
Petty Officer Ingram accompanied the point platoon as it aggressively dispatched an outpost of an NVA battalion. The momentum of the attack rolled off a ridge line down a tree covered slope to a small paddy and a village beyond. Suddenly, the village tree line exploded with an intense hail of automatic rifle fire from approximately 100 North Vietnamese regulars. In mere moments the platoon ranks were decimated. Oblivious to the danger, Petty Officer Ingram crawled across the bullet spattered terrain to reach a downed Marine. As he administered aid, a bullet went through the palm of his hand. Calls for “CORPSMAN” echoed across the ridge. Bleeding, he edged across the fire swept landscape, collecting ammunition from the dead and administering aid to the wounded. Receiving two more wounds before realizing the third wound was life-threatening, he looked for a way off the face of the ridge, but again he heard the call for corpsman and again, he resolutely answered. Though severely wounded three times, he rendered aid to those incapable until he finally reached the right flank of the platoon. While dressing head wound of another corpsman, he sustained his fourth bullet wound. From sixteen hundred hours until just prior to sunset, Petty Officer Ingram pushed, pulled, cajoled and doctored his Marines. Enduring the pain from many wounds and disregarding the probability of his own demise, Petty Officer Ingram’s intrepid actions saved many lives that day. By his indomitable fighting spirit, daring initiative, and unfaltering dedication to duty, Petty Officer Ingram reflected great credit upon himself and upheld the highest traditions of the United States Naval Service.
 
What the citation doesn’t tell us is that he was also shot through the knee and limped from man to man giving first aid. When asked by a reporter why he didn’t accept the medevac ride out of the battle field he responded, “The men needed me.” It also does not tell that as he collected ammunition and rifles in order to deny the enemy weapons captures and that he also did a lot of firing at them. The third shot he took “came in beneath his right eye, went through his sinuses, and exited the left side of his skull where the jaw attaches. He killed the NVA soldier who had shot him from fifteen feet away. He had lost all hearing but continued to help other wounded when he was hit for a fourth time. He was finally put on a helicopter and his bullet-ridden body was tagged “killed in action.” He survived though, was put in for a Medal of Honor which was awarded 32 years later, but that’s another story. To him, the important thing is that 25 of the marines who were in that rice paddy are still here today, some or all of them because of a Navy corpsman who exhibited intrepidity.
 
Bill Potter
May 19, 2008